21 replies to this topic

[Rennn]

 

 

As for in-game settings when having a stronger CPU you can make it take the bigger load  by using a higher resolution to smooth out object edges and Disable Anti-Aliasing which does the same but uses the GPU, which in ur case , is weaker than the CPU .

 

 

His screen's native res is 1080p, and that's ideal for a 660m. Going lower would not improve performance enough to be worth the massive visual degradation of subsampling, and going higher would require downsampling, which is not ideal for laptops or their screens. He should stay at 1080p in every game. Antialiasing, on the other hand, can be replaced with FXAA in his Nvidia drivers or turned off entirely when every bit of performance is needed.

 

 

A 660m should be able to run just about everything at at least 30 fps. Get a program called Nvidia Inspector. Use it to set vsync in your Nvidia drivers to Adaptive at 1/2 refresh rate, and force on Smooth AFR Behavior. That should cap your framerate at 30 as smoothly as possible.

 

D3DOverride is great when you can run at 60 fps, but a 660m isn't capable of putting everything at 60 fps, so a cap of 30 fps is much more efficient, and after a couple days I doubt you'd notice any difference in smoothness.

Edited by Rennn, 17 September 2013 - 08:31 PM.

[spz2]

Ok i saw you mentioning Nvidia inspector and i tought to myself at first , this guy knows his s*** and stuff but then i saw you saying you should cap ur frames at 30 and i scratched that . Bro don't ! Never ! 30 fps is hellish , try that with a very competitive online game to get an impression on how much that destroys a game's smootheness , u'll be beaten into the ground by the other players.

[Werne]

30 fps is hellish

Kids these days...

 

Let me tell you something, 30FPS and 60FPS only differ in visual smoothness, 30 frames per second is enough if you're not looking at absolute visual realism. As for the online game thingy, that would only make sense if you have a reaction time of 1/30 of a second, or 1/60 of a second at 60FPS, but average human reaction time is 1/9 to 1/3 of a second. So there is no reason for running a game at 60FPS other than visual appeal.

[spz2]

 

30 fps is hellish

Kids these days...

 

Let me tell you something, 30FPS and 60FPS only differ in visual smoothness, 30 frames per second is enough if you're not looking at absolute visual realism. As for the online game thingy, that would only make sense if you have a reaction time of 1/30 of a second, or 1/60 of a second at 60FPS, but average human reaction time is 1/9 to 1/3 of a second. So there is no reason for running a game at 60FPS other than visual appeal.

 

u have never played an online game like , Counter-strike ,LeagueOfLegends, Dota. Try one at full speed then try it at capped framerates , a difference of 10fps , from 50 to 60 can be a game maker or game breaker . I say online games because there you are playing against a somewhat smarter enemy not scripted A.i. so reaction time will give you a noticeable advantage that you can actually notice as clearly as you notice daylight. Where in single player experiences strategy is all you need, 30 fps is enough i agree with you BUT , it is not the same ! Don't be telling people that the human eye cannot percieve more than 30 fps and shet  and that in movies 24 is enough to create perfect fluidity because games are not movies . In movies every frame is PERFECTLY synced. In games you will get sometimes from 50FPS the first 40 frames in the 0.5 of the second then the 10 rest in other half of the second . Do you understand ? The more fps your game has the bigger the changes of creating continuous frames because it has a bigger pool of frames to fill those gaps.

Edited by spz2, 18 September 2013 - 06:09 PM.

[Rennn]

 

 

30 fps is hellish

Kids these days...

 

Let me tell you something, 30FPS and 60FPS only differ in visual smoothness, 30 frames per second is enough if you're not looking at absolute visual realism. As for the online game thingy, that would only make sense if you have a reaction time of 1/30 of a second, or 1/60 of a second at 60FPS, but average human reaction time is 1/9 to 1/3 of a second. So there is no reason for running a game at 60FPS other than visual appeal.

 

u have never played an online game like , Counter-strike ,LeagueOfLegends, Dota. Try one at full speed then try it at capped framerates , a difference of 10fps , from 50 to 60 can be a game maker or game breaker . I say online games because there you are playing against a somewhat smarter enemy not scripted A.i. so reaction time will give you a noticeable advantage that you can actually notice as clearly as you notice daylight. Where in single player experiences strategy is all you need, 30 fps is enough i agree with you BUT , it is not the same ! Don't be telling people that the human eye cannot percieve more than 30 fps and shet  and that in movies 24 is enough to create perfect fluidity because games are not movies . In movies every frame is PERFECTLY synced. In games you will get sometimes from 50FPS the first 40 frames in the 0.5 of the second then the 10 rest in other half of the second . Do you understand ? The more fps your game has the bigger the changes of creating continuous frames because it has a bigger pool of frames to fill those gaps.

 

 

I play BF3, Blacklight, and Counter-Srike at 30 fps. My average k/d didn't change from 60 fps (1:1, 1.5:1, 0.8:1 respectively).

A regular cap of 30 fps is crap, I agree. That's why you shouldn't use a normal framerate capper. You need to use adaptive vsync at 1/2 your refresh rate. That doesn't stop your video card from rendering more frames to fill gaps, it simply syncs the frames to 30 fps. It avoids microstutter created by a normal fps cap. It won't keep video card heat or power draw down like a regular cap will, but it's far more effective at making 30 fps look smooth.

 

In addition, Werne is correct. It takes about 100ms for your mind's reaction to be translated into actual motion. That's about 1/10 of a second. It's physically impossible for reaction time to differ between 30 fps and 60 fps, as long as you use vsync as a capper rather than actually limiting the framerate at an engine level (which creates problems with animation syncing and screen tracking on some engines).

 

What other options does the OP really have? Even if by some miracle he can replace his 660m with a GTX 760, it still won't be enough to keep 60 fps in every new game. An unstable framerate dropping from 60 to 55 is far worse for player reaction time than a stable framerate at 30 fps. Simply by switching the cap from 60 to 30 fps, it's as if you literally double your graphics processing power. Perhaps some people won't like a cap of 30 fps, but the change is easily reversible. The poster may as well test it for a few hours.

Edited by Rennn, 18 September 2013 - 07:00 PM.

[BeyondTom]

Framerate hardly matters (within reason), though I personally like to keep it above 60 myself due to mouse imput lag and crossfire micro stuttering at lower frame rates. Frame pacing is what you should be concerned about. An additional 10 fps will do nothing for you if you have 80ms delivery time spikes.

 

And back to the topic;

 

lloydmaster122I don't think it would be with while for you to upgrade this year. A GTX 780m would be the only worth while Nvidia upgrade (laptops don't often have the support to switch manufacturer) and that would run you between $600-900 (probably about $750USD). There is only one generation between your card and the 780m, so even though there is a significant performace difference you would be better off tweaking the settings, keeping you laptop clean for temp reasons, updating your video drivers and maybe doing a clean install on Skyrim for the off chance that old mod files are messing with things because a 660m should be able to handle high settings in almost every game. Maybe when Nvidia releases its 9XXm series it would be good for you to check out in a year and a half or so.

[Werne]

Don't be telling people that the human eye cannot percieve more than 30 fps and shet  and that in movies 24 is enough to create perfect fluidity because games are not movies

 

You didn't read my post at all did you. I never mentioned that "the human eye can't percieve the difference" and I never mentioned anything about movies either.

 

I said the brain doesn't react any faster than what it's made to react, which is 150-300ms, whereas each frame at 30FPS lasts 33.3ms, meaning that about 5-10 frames pass before you are able to react. At 60FPS each frame lasts 16.6ms and 10-20 frames pass before you react.

 

Reaction time is the same meaning you'll react at the same time regardless of how fast the framerate is. Someone with excellent reflexes and reaction time of 100ms playing a game at 30FPS would beat a person with slower 300ms reaction time even if the slower guy plays at 60FPS, because he can react faster than his opponent. Only if a frame lasts longer than your reaction time will you be unable to react, but that's a framerate of 9-3FPS which is practically unplayable.

[lloydmaster122]

@ BeyondTom:     Thanks man! I appreciate the advice. I didn't take in to account how different it really would have been with the cost efficiency in mind. Not a good idea on my part.

 

@ Everyone Else:      I hear your comments, and all are appreciated, but I do believe I will try the Nvidia inspector and v-sync, as they seem reasonable.

[FMod]

His screen's native res is 1080p, and that's ideal for a 660m.

Is it? 660M is not a GTX660.

660M is a 640 GFLOPS, 26 GT/s GK107 unit.
GTX660 is a 1.88 TFLOPS, 78 GT/s GK106 unit.
It would take three 660M to match one 660.

Laptop CPU and GPU names are a scam - they're named after fast desktop units, even though a laptop Core i7 is quite literally a desktop Core i3, and GPU, well, see above.


 

As for the online game thingy, that would only make sense if you have a reaction time of 1/30 of a second, or 1/60 of a second at 60FPS, but average human reaction time is 1/9 to 1/3 of a second.

Generally your reaction time to simple stimuli should be about 1/10 of a second or better. Like "hear a sound, click the mouse". Most people will score 140-200ms due to lag.

Now to the issue of lag. The lag is not just one frame; there are several frames in the pipeline (3-4), plus game engine inputs polling is normally tied to framerate. This means as much as -80ms difference between 30fps and 60fps, and a further -40ms from 60 to 120 fps.

---

A laptop 1080p screen and a 1080p TV are a world apart. Laptops don't need 1080p screens. They may make text look a bit neater, but all in all, there's not much gain; the pixels are just too small.

Modern upsampling algorithms are fairly decent as long as the resolutions are far enough apart. You'll only notice a very small loss in visual quality running 720p on a 1080p screen compared to 720p on a 720p screen. Considering that you don't really need 1080p for movies or gaming on such a small screen, running 720p is a perfectly practical solution.

Any higher resolution and resampling quality will suffer, any lower and you start losing too much detail. Modern games are optimized for 720p per console capabilities.

[spz2]

@ BeyondTom:     Thanks man! I appreciate the advice. I didn't take in to account how different it really would have been with the cost efficiency in mind. Not a good idea on my part.

 

@ Everyone Else:      I hear your comments, and all are appreciated, but I do believe I will try the Nvidia inspector and v-sync, as they seem reasonable.

 

Nvidia inspector doesn't have a FAQ or User manual , but it is a very useful tool , for those who know what they are doing or for those who have the time to try different settings and experiment.

 

I gave you four tips on how to make your system run smoother yet i haven't given you a FPS increase with those , now i will , i forgot about this one . Use the monitor timming called CVT-RB ( aka coordinated video standard - reduced blanking) . Most modern monitor screens, LCD's and LED's support it , as for laptops i think it should pose no issues either .

How to use it : enter you forceware settings menu, - Change resolution - Add resolutions- Create custom resolutions(think you will get a warning message here ) and from here look for "timing" or "standard" , and don't change anything else but this then save. You have do this procedure for every resolution you want to use, i do not have exact instructions because they vary depending on the forceare version you're using. If it's not already selected as default this setting will give a fps boost every game , even very old ones , it's a free FPS boost, no negative image quality impact or risks involved in this "trade".

If your screen image doesn't fit and you cannot make it right with your monitor settings just revert back.....Repeat the procedure and just use simple CVT as it is the next best thing after CVT-RB.

 

 

 

You may also want to look into a program called WinAAM , it manages the so called accoustic something , i don't know , well you just move a slider and it improves your mouse and keyboard responses.These kinds of issues were infamous with Oblivion . I found there is no diference between the 128 and 192 setting but the "254" setting will make your hardisks louder and an improvement in "access time" is given . You can actually feel the difference in performance in many games .

 

If i think of any more tips 'ill come back . And don't listen to these people telling you that beyond certain point you will not notice the difference , they are just lying to themselves and they are trying to corrupt you, THERE IS ALWAYS ROOM FOR BETTER .....Yet do not buy anything , your hardware is top notch .